Tony Abbott promises 'modest' savings before final costings release

Posted
September 02, 2013 20:19:00

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says there will be more 'modest' policies and savings announced in coming days while he also addresses his party's approach to climate policy, Syria and other policy challenges facing whoever is in government after the federal election.

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: For three years, Tony Abbott has fought to bring down the minority Labor government, and as Chris just said, finally this Saturday he will discover if his hard work has persuaded Australians that he deserves to run the country. A short time ago, Mr Abbott joined me from Canberra.

Mr Abbott, thank you for joining us.

TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER: Thanks, Leigh.

LEIGH SALES: Trust is a key issue in this election. Aren't you making it hard for Australians to trust you by declining to release your full costings and spending cuts until 48 hours before the polls open?

TONY ABBOTT: Leigh, I think people have had three years to look at me. They've had plenty of time to look at Mr Rudd, and I'm very happy to submit myself to the judgment of the people on the subject of trust. If we consider this question of costings, as Penny Wong admitted today, there are still policies that the Government is releasing which haven't been submitted to the Treasury for costing and we had policies that the Prime Minister announced in his campaign launch on Sunday which seemed to be funded by some undisclosed hollow log in the budget as Gary Gray made clear today. So ...

LEIGH SALES: So, what, Labor's behaviour's your benchmark?

TONY ABBOTT: No. I'm proud, Leigh, that no opposition in our history has been as responsible and as scrupulous with its costings as we have been. Some 200 draft policies have gone to Parliamentary Budget Office. And all of the policies that we release and all of the final costings that we release will be validated by the panel of experts, three people of very great experience and very high reputation.

LEIGH SALES: But you say Australians have had three years to have a look at you. You haven't had your policies or your costings out for three years. We haven't seen the documents from the Parliamentary Budget Office and there are still outstanding spending cuts that we know that you haven't announced?

TONY ABBOTT: But we did announce - or we did formalise $31 billion of spending reductions last week. That Government attempted to blow a hole in those and of course that attempt blew up in the Government's face when it turned out that the Treasury figures that the Government released weren't in fact costings of our policies; they were costings of what the Government said were our policies and Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson come out and effectively repudiated the Government later that day.

LEIGH SALES: But you do have more spending cuts to announce.

TONY ABBOTT: We will have more to say later in the week. And yes, there will be some modest additional savings announced later in the week. But when people see the full list of savings, I think again Mr Rudd is gonna be embarrassed because what people will see is that the $70 billion figure that Mr Rudd and his ministers have been trumpeting for months now is a complete furphy.

LEIGH SALES: If Mr Rudd's going to be embarrassed, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to embarrass him as soon as possible as early as you can in the campaign.

TONY ABBOTT: Because the right time to release your final costings is when you have released your final policies. I released policy today. I'll have some further modest policy announcements over the next couple of days. When you've got all your policies out, then you release your final costings, your full list of spends, your full list of saves, and as I said, the budget bottom line will be better under us than under Labor. It always is because we've got savings and surpluses in our DNA, unlike Labor.

LEIGH SALES: But do you accept that at the moment, we voters have to just take you on faith on that?

TONY ABBOTT: Look at the record, Leigh. The last Coalition government turned a $10 billion budget black hole into consistent one-per-cent-of-GDP surpluses. The last Coalition government, $96 billion of Commonwealth debt into $50 billion in the bank. Look at Labor's record. The five biggest deficits in our history, and they haven't got any of their costings right. They haven't got any of their significant forecasts right. They told us for three years that there was gonna be a surplus in the last financial year. They utterly failed. They told us it was gonna be an $18 billion deficit this year at budget time. Now it's gonna be a $30 billion deficit.

LEIGH SALES: Let's stick with what you're doing. Are you concerned at all about imposing spending cuts at a time where we have softening commodity prices and growth slowing in key export markets? How conscious are you of the risk of driving Australia into a recession because you're in too much of a hurry to reduce debt?

TONY ABBOTT: Again, Leigh, look at the $31 billion of savings that we announced last week. Frankly, what we are doing is reducing unaffordable spending funded by revenue measures that frankly aren't working. Then there are things like not proceeding with the superannuation guarantee levy increase. That will actually help small business because it will put off for two years additional costs that small business has to meet. Now in the process, there's a saving to the budget, sure, but that's actually a saving which is going to assist business, not penalise business.

LEIGH SALES: On my broader point, though, are you conscious that what's happened in countries around the world who've imposed excessive austerity measures has been that it has contracted their economies?

TONY ABBOTT: We're not looking about austerity, Leigh; we're talking about sensible, prudent respect for taxpayers' dollars. We're talking about living within your means. Now, every family, every household understands that you've gotta live within your means. I get, Mr Rudd doesn't, that you cannot solve a problem essentially created by too much debt and deficit with yet more debt and deficit. Eventually, the spend-a-thon has got to stop and it will under the Coalition.

LEIGH SALES: If I want to vote for the party that believes in free markets and small government and is pro-business, for whom should I vote?

TONY ABBOTT: Well you should certainly vote for the Coalition.

LEIGH SALES: But so many of your policies are at odds with those principles - Direct Action on climate change, paid parental leave, handouts to Cadbury, a billion dollars to the car industry over the next couple of years, increases in taxes. Those policies don't square with those values.

TONY ABBOTT: I'm not sure that you have been - well, let me put it this way: I would characterise the policies in question a little differently. Look, I accept that we're not fundamentalists. I accept that we're not zealots. But I think you've got to accept for your part, Leigh, that the Coalition thinks that markets by and large work. Certainly I believe that markets have been the best way of generating wealth that humanity has ever come up with. If you look at the various business groups like the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, they are strongly supportive of the Coalition's policies. And look, we'll abolish the carbon tax, we'll abolish the mining tax, we'll cut a billion dollars a year out of red tape costs, we'll have a one-stop shop for environmental approvals, we'll put a tough cop on the beat in the workplace relations of the construction industry. All of this is very good for business, and of course there's a modest company tax cut.

LEIGH SALES: But you say you believe in markets, yet say on climate change for example, you've got a big government spending policy instead of a market-driven policy. The Howard Government in 2007 proposed a market-driven policy that you've walked away from.

TONY ABBOTT: An emissions trading scheme or carbon tax is a very artificial market, Leigh. What we're going to do is use incentives, not penalties. We are gonna go with the grain of business, because let's not forget, Leigh, that Australia's emissions intensity has reduced by about 50 per cent over the last two decades, as Australian businesses, without needing a carbon tax, whether fixed or floating, have very sensibly, in the ordinary course of responding to market pressures, they've tried to reduce their fuel and power costs. That's why our emissions intensity is going down, and this is one of the reasons why I am very, very confident that with sensible, targeted incentives and not with a great, big tax, we can get our emissions down by five per cent by 2020.

LEIGH SALES: Are you committed to that five per cent target whatever it takes?

TONY ABBOTT: I am absolutely confident that we can achieve it, but we have capped, costed and funded our Direct Action policy.

LEIGH SALES: So if it costs more than that $3.2 billion in your Direct Action policy and you can't reach the five per cent on that, you won't put any more money towards it?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I'm confident that we will reach the five per cent reduction target because as I said, we've a 50 per cent reduction in emissions intensity without any taxes and trading schemes from government. If you look at a company like Linfox, they've reduced their own emissions by 40 per cent or thereabouts since 2007, not because of a big, new tax or a trading scheme, Leigh, but because they have tried very sensibly to reduce their own costs. They've tried to reduce their fuel and power costs.

LEIGH SALES: If you are Prime Minister by this time next week, foreign policy becomes a big part of your responsibility and the big issue that will be running at the time will be Syria, so I just want to ask you a little bit about that.

TONY ABBOTT: Sure.

LEIGH SALES: You've characterised the conflict as baddies versus baddies. One side of that's obviously the Assad regime. I just wanted you to unpack that a little bit because the Syrian opposition is such a fractured group of disparate groups, who are the other baddies exactly in your view?

TONY ABBOTT: It seems that the Syrian opposition includes quite a number of elements that are highly influenced by al-Qaeda. That's why I say frankly it's a civil war between two pretty much equally unsavoury sides. That said, Leigh, the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime against its own people is an unspeakable abomination. It is an absolutely unspeakable abomination.

LEIGH SALES: So, do you mean specifically the Free Syrian Army of being the group that's of concern or do you mean more the sort of political aspects of the Syrian opposition like the National Coalition and the Syrian National Council?

TONY ABBOTT: It's a very disparate group, but some of the elements appear to be al-Qaeda influenced and we we've got to be very careful dealing in a powder keg like the Middle East that we don't take action, well-intentioned action which could end up making a bad situation worse. Let's face it, we've had some extensive Western interventions. We had intervention in Iraq. I supported it, but a lot of people would question its wisdom and its outcomes. We've had intervention in Afghanistan. Again, I supported it. A lot of people would question its wisdom and its ultimate outcomes. We've had intervention in Libya. Seems to have been more successful, but we're at the beginning of a long story there. We have to be very careful because if we break something, we own it.

LEIGH SALES: On that point about being very careful and particularly in these powderkeg-type situations, the White House announced in June that it would offer military aid to Syrian rebels, including small arms, ammunition and perhaps anti-tank weapons to help them take on the Assad regime. Is that a policy that you support given that you view the anti-Assad forces as people who are unsavoury?

TONY ABBOTT: Leigh, I don't think we should be getting ideas above our station. Australia has some heft in the world. We are probably the 12th largest economy, depending upon relative exchange rates.

LEIGH SALES: But sorry to interrupt, that's not what I asked. I just want to know do you support the US policy of arming the rebels in Syria?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I will leave it to the United States. Obviously it is the general disposition of the Australian Government, whether it be a Labor government or a Coalition government, to be supportive of the United States and our other allies. It's the general disposition of the Australian Government to stand up for the universal decencies of humanity. I just think we need to be very careful in a situation like this because we can easily make a bad situation worse by acting precipitously and I would be very cautious in a situation like this.

LEIGH SALES: Given that Australia has military-to-military ties with the US, would you be comfortable seeing Australian military expertise or technology afforded to Syrian rebels?

TONY ABBOTT: Leigh, no-one has asked for that. There is almost zero probability of that being sought. We have no military forces in the Mediterranean. We have no capacity to engage in the kind of strikes which the US is apparently considering against Syria. I don't think we should be getting above ourselves here. We are a significant middle power, but no more. Our capacity for major military involvement in the Middle East is quite limited.

LEIGH SALES: Given how you've described the situation in Syria, if Syrian asylum seekers started arriving in Australia via boat, would they be accepted as legitimate and provided refuge?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, again, Leigh, that's a bridge that we would be wise to cross when we come to it. But almost certainly, if people were fleeing the Syrian conflict, they would not be coming to Australia as a country of first asylum. They've got Lebanon, they've got Jordan, they've got Turkey, they've got Iraq. Any person fleeing Syria landing up in Australia would be in much the same position as the Hazaras and others who are coming by boat at the present time and our position very clearly is: you should come through the front door, not through the back door. You should not come illegally to Australia by boat.

LEIGH SALES: On a different subject, last month you said that the last thing you would want to see happen in Australia is for abortion to become a politicised issue. One of Julia Gillard's last acts as Prime Minister was to list the drug RU486 on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, meaning that the Australian taxpayer now heavily subsidises chemical abortion. That subsidy's been in place now for four weeks. Would you be interested in altering or reversing that decision?

TONY ABBOTT: That's a done deal. The deal stands.

LEIGH SALES: Can I also ask, the Prime Minister Mr Rudd has made the Murdoch press into an issue in this election campaign, pointing out repeatedly that he has had very harsh coverage and saying that you have had very favourable reporting. If you're elected, do you feel that you owe the Murdoch media anything?

TONY ABBOTT: Two points, Leigh. First of all, Mr Rudd never complained when News Limited broadly backed him in 2007, and second, if you want better coverage, you've got to be a better government. I think media outlets have every right to criticise a bad government and this one's been a shocker.

LEIGH SALES: Do you think that you owe them anything for the favourable coverage you've had?

TONY ABBOTT: Look, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I will do what I think is necessary in the national interest should we form a government, and I expect that when we do it right, we will probably get mild praise and if and when we do it wrong in the judgment of the various commentators we'll attract ferocious criticism.

LEIGH SALES: Mr Abbott, you promised to do two interviews with 7.30 during the campaign. Thank you very much for honouring that commitment and we'll look forward to seeing you on the other side of the election.

TONY ABBOTT: And Leigh, just one final message, if I may: elect the Coalition government on Saturday. We'll build a stronger economy so that everyone can get ahead. We'll scrap the carbon tax, end the waste, stop the boats and build the infrastructure and the roads of the 21st Century.

LEIGH SALES: You realise now I'm gonna have to give Kevin Rudd a final message like that when he comes on! (Laughs)

TONY ABBOTT: Fine. Understand. Understand.

LEIGH SALES: Tony Abbott, thank you very much.

TONY ABBOTT: Thanks so much.

LEIGH SALES: And like Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has agreed to two campaign interviews with 7.30. His second appearance will be later this week.